Straight Until Checkout — Bonus Chapter

Suite 714 — One Year Later
An EXCLUSIVE scene by Milo Hart

⚠️ Content Warning: Explicit MM sexual content. This scene takes place after the events of Straight Until Checkout and contains spoilers.

Suite 714 — One Year Later

Dan POV

The keycard was different.

Not the flimsy plastic rectangle I remembered — the one that Lena had slid across the front desk counter on a rainy night a lifetime ago. This keycard was heavy. Textured. The Bellweather’s new branding — clean, modern, the rebrand that Javi had designed as his first official freelance project — embossed in gold on matte black.

Suite 714. Fully renovated. No longer a crash room on a dead floor. A real suite, in a real hotel, booked by a real guest who happened to be a man returning to the room where his life had changed.

“You’re being dramatic,” Javi said behind me, his chin hooking over my shoulder, his arms wrapping around my waist.

“I’m savoring the moment.”

“Savor faster. I have plans for what’s behind that door and they require less clothing than we’re currently wearing.”

I swiped the card. The lock clicked green. I pushed the door open.

Suite 714 was unrecognizable. New everything. Hardwood floors where the teal carpet had been. A king bed with a tufted headboard. The kitchenette was real now — granite countertop, actual stove. The bathroom had been gutted and rebuilt with subway tile and a rainfall showerhead.

The balcony was the same. The view was the same — the parking structure, the gap between buildings, the skyline that glittered at night like something trying to be beautiful despite everything.

“Happy anniversary,” I said.

“Happy anniversary.” He crossed the room. Put his hands on my chest. “You booked our room. For our anniversary. Daniel Mercer. Romantic.”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

A bottle of Veuve Clicquot sat in an ice bucket on the counter. Two glasses. A card from Lena that read: I STILL don’t want to know. Happy anniversary. — L

Javi read the card. Laughed. Pressed his face into my chest and laughed until his shoulders shook.

“Open the champagne,” he said into my shirt. “And then take off your clothes.”

We drank. We toasted — “To checking in,” he said; “To staying,” I said. And then his mouth was on mine, tasting like champagne and want, and his hands were pulling my shirt over my head.

We didn’t make it to the bed.

The kitchenette counter — granite, cold and smooth — was where it happened first. Javi hoisted himself up, sat on the edge, pulled me between his legs by the belt loops, and kissed me with the focused, expert attention of a man who’d spent a year perfecting the science of taking me apart.

“Remember the first time?” he murmured against my mouth. “In this room?”

“The blackout.” My hands on his thighs, pushing them apart. “You grabbed my shirt and pulled me back in.”

“You were shaking. Your hands were shaking when you touched me for the first time.” He undid my belt. His hand slid inside. “They’re not shaking now.”

“No. They’re not.”

I kissed his throat. His collarbone. The spot above the collar line where I’d placed the first visible mark a year ago. I sucked a bruise there now, deliberate, possessive, and Javi’s head fell back, his hand tightening on me through my boxers.

“Above the line,” he breathed. “Always above the line.”

“Always.”

I stripped him. Until he was naked on the granite counter with his legs wrapped around my waist and his cock hard against my stomach and his eyes dark with the specific blend of desire and trust that I’d spent a year earning.

I prepped him slowly. One finger, then two, watching his face — the parted lips, the flutter of his eyelids, the moment his hips tilted to take me deeper. I curled my fingers. Found the spot. His back arched off the counter.

“Dan — fuck — right there —”

“I know where it is. I’ve had practice.”

“Shut up and don’t stop.”

Three fingers. Working him open with the patience he’d taught me in this room a year ago. I knew his body the way I knew spreadsheets — thoroughly, precisely, with the willingness to learn something new every time.

I rolled on the condom. Lifted his hips. And pushed in.

The counter was the perfect height. His legs locked around my back, his hands braced behind him on the granite, and I entered him in one slow, devastating stroke that made us both groan. The angle was deep — deeper than the bed, deeper than the couch — hitting every nerve ending simultaneously.

“Oh God —” His head fell back. “Dan — a year and you still feel like —”

“Like what?”

“Like the first time. Every time. Like I’m discovering you.”

I stopped being gentle. My hands gripped his hips. My pace accelerated — harder, deeper, the counter providing the leverage to drive into him with a force that made his whole body jolt. His cock leaked between us, his mouth open on sounds that were getting louder and less controlled.

“Dan — oh fuck — yes — please — sir —”

The word. Our word. The word that had been a joke and a kink and a weapon and a wall and, finally, a gift.

“Say it again,” I said.

“Sir.” His hands found my face. Pulled me close until our foreheads touched. “Sir. Please. Make me come. Right here. In our room. Where it started.”

I wrapped my hand around him. Stroked him with the rhythm I knew — firm, twist at the head, thumb across the slit — synchronized with my thrusts. His composure shattered. His body clenched around me, his voice breaking on my name.

He came with a cry that echoed off the renovated walls of Suite 714. His body arched, his cock pulsing in my hand, and the clench of him pulled me over the edge with him.

I came saying “I love you.” Not mine. Not stay. The real words. The ones I said every morning and every night and would say for as long as he let me.

Later. The bed. (It didn’t squeak.)

We lay tangled in sheets that probably cost as much as our monthly grocery bill, the champagne bottle empty on the nightstand, the room dark except for the parking structure lights filtering through the curtains — the same pale stripe that had cut across the teal carpet a year ago.

“Next year,” Javi said, his head on my chest, tracing circles on my sternum. “We should bring Marcus and Lena.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Double date in Suite 714.”

“I will divorce you.”

“We’re not married.”

“I’ll marry you and then divorce you just to make the point.”

He went still. Lifted his head. Looked at me in the dim light.

“That’s the worst proposal I’ve ever heard,” he said.

“It wasn’t a proposal.”

“It was a little bit a proposal.”

“You said marry.”

“In the context of divorce.”